This invention relates generally to method and apparatus for office information systems and more specifically to communication terminals having a raster image scanner and being capable of dealing with the combination of text and graphic images created with structured and unstructured data.
Office information systems include computers and associated peripherals such as monitors, e.g. a cathode ray tube (CRT), mass storage devices such as disks, and printers to keep track of, to manipulate and to distribute information necessary to the activities of a given office. Typically, these systems deal only with structured, i.e. coded, digital data to represent the information. Text and (synthesized) graphic information displayed on a monitor or printed out by a printer are created solely from structured data.
A daisy wheel printer is an example of a printer than can create only limited images and it does so from structured or coded input data. In contrast, a CRT monitor and a matrix pin printer create images in a raster pattern made up of a plurality of rows of pixels or points on the screen or a page of paper each of which must be represented by a binary bit to represent an "on", i.e. glow state for a given pixel on the monitor screen or the "dot" for a given pixel on a piece of paper in the printer. The pixel on the monitor screen may also have a plurality of intensity levels but that dimension is not relevant to the present discussion.
Structured or coded data applied to a CRT or a matrix pin printer requires that the code be translated by a local character generator into a family of binary bits or data that represent the "on" or "off" status of the number of pixels and rows needed to create the image represented by the code. Coded data applied to a daisy wheel serial printer merely requires that the character on a given pedal of the daisy wheel be positioned under the printer hammer in response to the code for the given character.
As used herein, digital or binary data that represents the "on" or "off" (or "dot" or "blank") status of all the pixels in the raster--or a portion of the raster--is unstructured or uncoded data.
Hereafter, the term "text data" is intended to mean structured or coded data representing an image to be created at either or both a monitor and printer. Text data is an appropriate term for coded data because a large portion of the coded data in an office information system is likely to be English prose--or another language--as distinquished from graphics. However, it is also meant to include data representive of any information symbols such as mathematical expressions and geometric line segments, an arc and a curve.
The term "graphic data" is intended to mean unstructured data representative of the binary bit pattern associated with a raster image. This term is appropriate for unstructured data because it conveys the idea of being related to a picture, handwritten prose, a chart or graph or the like which logically would be appropriate for being scanned by a camera.
The reader should understand, however, that text data can represent graphic information but it will be in a structured data form and graphic data can represent printed prose if that is the information put in front of the raster scanner.
Prior to this invention, raster scanning devices that generate unstructured data, e.g. the vidicon tube of a television (TV) camera and charge coupled device (CCD) arrays with scanning optics, have not been integrated into office information systems. The complexity of dealing with the unstructed data produced by the scanner was understood to require too great expenditures of money to make the integration of a camera into the system economically feasible. As explained, monitors and printers typically found in office information systems respond only to structured input data. The communication time required to transmit information represented by unstructured data is much greater than that for information represented by coded data which is another inhibiting factor. Most significantly, no one perceived the present system configuration or its ability to make a highly effective use of a scanning camera and its graphic data.
The publishing industry has used computers and monitors to edit materials prior to publication but their systems are not office information systems. The publishing systems are not interactive communication tools but rather are used to make printing masters that include both text information, i.e. prose, and graphic information, i.e. a facsimile of a photograph. The requirements of a publishing system differ greatly from that of an office information system. For one, the image resolution requirements, expressed in terms of pixels per inch (ppi), of the publishing system are economically inappropriate for a real-time, interactive, office information system. The scan rate in a publishing system is generally inappropriate and the required graphic data storage for too excessive for an office information system. Also, a document need not be displayed while it is being transmitted to a remote station when the purpose is photographic plate or master making.
Office systems have needed a terminal suited in particular for the manager or executive. Managers continually communicate with their peers and subordinates. A good portion of their communications are over the telephone and often a document necessary to the conversation exists in the hands of only one of the callers. In addition, information in digital form on a word processing system or in a personal computer would be helpful to the conversation but there is no appropriate means for transmitting it between terminals in real or near real time. The callers, of course, would have no way of modifying or blending transmitted text data with graphic data in a manner helpful to a phone conversation between the users of the terminals. Also, there is a need to store both graphic and text data at remote devices for rapid retrieval and review.